[Hubris]

**This is my first time ever posting on a forum of any sort, so I'm sorry if fail to adhere to common forum etiquette.**

So I've had my mini 10v for many years now, in which time I've had absolutely no problems, save for replacing a couple of chargers. During the time of dependable functionality, it was running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. I've had a couple of attempts in the past to run a duel boot with Linux, installing Ubuntu, and I originally found it unstable and hard to use (which I put down mostly to user error).

But recently I thought I might try again, and had a go at installing Mint 14.1. I ran into a few problems with my original attempts at Mint, mostly due to a bad iso image. But once I got a functional install USB running, wiped an old Ubuntu partition I had and replaced it with Mint, messed with grub, and got into the distro, the problems started to occur;

At any point during its use, normally quite early in the boot (a few minutes or so), it would crash, screen black, then the dell logo would appear and it'd be restarting. I had a bit of a google, couldn't find anything helpful, so I decided to do another clean install. But the second time around, I booted into the USB and the Live Mint version crashed in the same manor.

At this point, the problem wasn't happening in windows, it was running as well as ever. So I tried downloading another ISO, using a different program to install the image to USB, even tried a different USB and used another computer to make the live boot. The problem persisted.

So I decided to try a different distro, and went for Debian 6.06, and I decided to format the hard drive and start afresh. The Debian installer seemed promising but towards the end of the install, it crashed out and restarted again.

Tried to install again, same problem. So I booted into Hiren's boot CD, which mostly had the same problem of crashing out, unless I selected a program quickly. I ran Memtest86+ for five passes, nothing, I did hard drive tests, not a bad sector in sight, I ran different CPU benchmarks and pushed it to the limit but it didn't crash out.

So using GParted, I wiped the hard drive, filing system and all, and created a new partition table. And had a go at installing Debian again. This time, it installed beautifully, no crashing or errors. But when I booted into it, about five minutes in, it crashed out again, restarted, and crashed at different points between the grub loader and KDE splash screen about 11 times before it decided to run persistently until I turned it off.

Which brings me to where I am now, I've gone ahead with trying to get the BCM4312 wireless card working (to no avail), and the system seems to run quite well for some period of time. But every now and then, it just will have a frenzy of restarting. Or randomly restart while I'm doing things.

Any help would be wonderful, and feel free to ask for any further information. Cheers

[lswartz]

Are you running your Mini 10 with the power plugged in with the battery charged? Is the power connection secure or loose? I don't think this has anything to do with your choice of Mint or Debian.

[Hubris]

Thanks for the reply. I normally run it with the power plugged in and battery charged. Though the problem still persists running on battery alone, or power plugged in with batter out. The power cable fits snug as it should.

I've been a bit busy lately, but I'm going to see if I can get windows running on it again, to see whether the problem effects windows now, as I assume it should.

[lswartz]

You might also try it without the battery using just the power supply.

Added.

I just reviewed your original post. I had to connect to the internet via Ethernet cable to download the wireless driver. I believe that later versions of Ubuntu fixed this issue.